With Education Secretary Betsey Devos much in the news over possible changes to the Dear Colleague letter promulgated by the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights, this note by me and my Lightfoot colleagues Brandon Essig and Clint Speegle in University Business is timely: High-profile lawsuits, OCR investigations and new congressional legislative interest have all conspired to mean that colleges and universities ignore the Dear Colleague situation to their peril. Unlike the disciplinary process for a cheating scandal, the resolution of a sexual assault case is a classic “parallel-proceedings” scenario. At any moment there may be an administrative proceeding (by the university), as well as a criminal investigation (by external law enforcement)…

Law360’s Zachary Zagger has a nice piece on the FIFA prosecution and quotes, among others, Jack Sharman: “Given this many defendants and the fact that there is going to be at least some who are going to cooperate, it would not surprise me if there wasn’t a second wave of charges or people coming out of the woodwork, people you have not heard of yet,” said Jackson R. Sharman III, a white collar criminal defense attorney with Lightfoot Franklin & White LLC. “If it is going to survive, it is going to have to have a more rigorous compliance structure than some of the items that have come across thus far,”…

In disciplinary proceedings involving claims of sexual assault, universities continue to find themselves in an intolerable situation, caught in a lawyer-triangle of the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, student-complainants and the student-defendants. In part, at least, as a result of OCR’s “Dear Colleague” letter to colleges and universities about Title IX and disciplinary proceedings, there has been an upsurge in reported instances of sexual assault on campus. At the same time, there has been a sharp increase in lawsuits brought by student-respondents (that is, the male students who are accused), as this Wall Street Journal article details: In Campus Rape Tribunals, Some Men See Injustice. The scenario set…

A short — 140 seconds — note on the thickets of Title IX, sexual assault, university discipline and parallel procedures: University Discipline, Sexual Assault and Parallel Proceedings from LFW on Vimeo. Here’s a longer written piece: Dear Colleagues All: University Discipline, Sexual Assault and The Department of Education And, should anyone doubt the human costs involved in the mishandling of such investigations, one only need to recall disgraced prosecutor Mike Nifong and the Duke lacrosse case, as highlighted by Ed Bradley and 60 Minutes:

Title IX. Crime. Sexual assault. University disciplinary procedures. Civil litigation. Enormous amounts of money. The Fifth Amendment. And that’s all before you hire a lawyer. This is a perilous time for university disciplinary systems and those who administer them, especially with regard to claims of sexual assault. A college or university can find itself in the midst of – indeed, at the helm of – a set of quasi-criminal parallel proceedings that can make the school liable to student complainants, student respondents and federal enforcement authorities. How does this happen, and what are the factors to keep in mind to minimize that exposure? Disciplinary systems and educational missions have been…

You may (or may not) recall the Boy Scout Law: “A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, friendly, brave, clean and reverent.” Your corporate employees, officers and colleagues may exhibit all, some or none of those characteristics. Even if one masters all the peculiars of the Boy Scout Law, however, strict adherence is no shield against indictment in the situation where one moves from “witness” to “target” for reasons outside the control of the “Scout.” So: herewith 6 lessons to heed if you wish to avoid ending up like a young man named Zachary Warren. It is unusual for the government to indict leaders of…